Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Nautical Snagley

When I was a kid I had great nautical ambitions. I wanted to be an admiral at the very least a captain. So at age seven a young friend of mine named Sven and I decided to build a raft and float down “Sven’s Crick”. The Crick was known as Sven’s crick it slugged through a cow pasture and forming a rather lazy swamp, it then meandered across a dairy farm and into the woods. Before it made it into the cow pasture it was a creek known as yellow leaf creek. The creek was turned into a crick by the mere presence of cows or rather the byproduct of cows, poop.We searched for timber to fell in order to build the raft but since neither of our parents trusted us with axes we settled for some fence posts hidden behind Mr. Johansson’s barn. We used hay-bailing twine to bind the fence posts together. We used about 50 posts, three layers thick to build our raft. After building the raft we tried to move the raft.

And it did weigh 1000 pounds. We disassembled the raft and reassembled it on the bank of Sven’s Crick. It was a beautiful day. The birds were singing the sky was blue; there was a slight breeze. We looked at the raft with abject pride. I said this raft should float us all the way to the Mississippi. We should put a tent on top of it.

Sven said “Snagley I think it might only hold one of us”. “Maybe you should take the maiden voyage”.I said “Sven maybe you should take the first ride that way I can throw you this rope if you need it”.Sven said I can’t do it Snagley I am wearing my good pants”.He had me there. I did not have any good pants so I had no argument.